


i've got you

by iron_spider



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22443829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iron_spider/pseuds/iron_spider
Summary: Tony starts heading towards the south entrance like a man possessed, weaving through the dining room and out into the hallway. He pushes the door open and moves into the foyer, and sees Peter standing there by the door.Peter looks up like he didn’t expect to see him there, and his eyes are red-rimmed like he’s been crying. He looks strange, shell-shocked, and Tony sees the abrasion Friday mentioned, and a cut on his side that sliced right through the suit. His hands are shaking, and he’s holding his arms close to himself, like he’s trying to be small.Tony strides towards him, trying to hold eye contact. “What’s wrong, bud?” he asks, his heart beating in his ears. He reaches him, immediately gripping Peter’s elbow. “What’s wrong? What happened?”Peter stares at him for a second, and then he shakes his head, looking down at the ground. “Nothing,” he says, voice dry and wavering. “I’m—I’m fine. It’s fine.”Tony doesn’t mean to, but he scoffs, stepping closer. “You’re fine? You don’t look fine. It doesn’t seem fine.”
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 101
Kudos: 1012





	i've got you

Tony’s eyes are drifting closed again when he startles himself awake, his head shooting forward like a spring board. Pepper is asleep, Morgan is asleep, and he _should_ be asleep—but May’s proposal for new housing for the displaced blip victims is still sitting in his lap, thirty out of forty five pages read. 

He needs to just tell her he’s in. He’s in, no matter what the proposal says, no matter how much money it’s gonna cost to get it on its feet. But May Parker is nothing but thorough, and she’ll know if he misses any single one of her well-thought out details.

May is also sleeping upstairs. They’ve all been here for the past four months, at this second secret Avengers headquarters that Tony had hidden in Manhattan, and the new Parker apartment will be ready within the next week. Tony made sure to keep them close, because—well, because he’s selfish. He’s a selfish man, he knows this, everybody knows this.

He doesn’t want Peter to go. Tony knows, logically, that he’s still gonna see the kid just as much once the Parkers move out. But he’s become more attached than he ever could have imagined, despite knowing his own tendencies and how damn clingy he can be. 

He feels better, knowing Peter is living under the same roof. That Peter is _living_ , more than anything. But living around him—vibrant, laughing, recovering—is a balm on Tony’s scarred and cracked heart.

Losing Peter sent him to the cabin, knocked him right out of regular society when it needed him most. And getting Peter back—Tony was able to return back to the world, move back to a place where people would see him and his family. Like Peter was the guiding light that he’d been so missing in the darkness of those five years. Morgan set things aglow again when she arrived, and Tony loves his little girl to the moon and back—but he wasn’t complete, without Peter. He knew, when he was losing him—finally, truly knew what he meant to him. But it was too late.

They’ve fixed it now, for all intents and purposes. The world is recovering, Morgan’s got her big brother. And Spider-Man is swinging through the streets again.

And half the reason why Tony is still sitting up awake right now is because Peter isn’t home yet. Tony should have known, despite the way his heart shuddered at the thought, that Peter would get back into his superhero duties pretty quick after coming back. And he’s done just that—like nothing ever happened to him, like he’s not still a full time student, like every little thing depends on Spider-Man being out there, ready to help.

Tony is still recovering. He nearly lost his goddamn arm, and he still doesn’t have much feeling in it, despite constant physical therapy. But Peter—Peter was _dead_. And Tony doesn’t really think the kid’s dealt with it. But Tony doesn’t check in on Peter’s feed while he’s out—he’s trying not to be overbearing, even though the inclination is enough to knock him the fuck out. 

Half the time, Morgan runs around here in a Spider-Man outfit. Despite the fact that Tony loves how much she loves Peter, if she so much as thinks about following in his footsteps, Tony is gonna have a heart attack and die. Simple as that.

He sighs, glancing down at May’s stack of papers again. He can see the clock buzzing one am out of the corner of his eye, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can make it before he crashes. He’s an old guy, these days, as much as he doesn’t wanna be.

And that’s when Friday chimes in.

“ _Boss, Peter is scanning into the facility._ ”

Tony blinks a few times, sitting up. “He okay?” he asks, trying to sound nonchalant to his own goddamn AI.

“ _A few cuts and bruises, one abrasion on his forehead, but the damage seems to be more emotional._ ”

Tony narrows his eyes at that. “Uh, elaborate.”

“ _His heart rate and blood pressure are up significantly, and his emotional state is not the same as it usually is after a night of patrolling._ ”

Tony gets up without thinking about it, and May’s packet flutters to the ground. Tony curses to himself, quickly picks it up, glad the staple in the corner is holding it all in place. He puts it down in the chair, and starts walking—then he stops in his tracks. “Uh, what entrance? I wanna meet him.”

“ _South entrance, boss. He’s moving slowly, but not because of any injury._ ”

Tony doesn’t like how that fucking sounds.

He starts heading towards the south entrance like a man possessed, weaving through the dining room and out into the hallway. He pushes the door open and moves into the foyer, and sees Peter standing there by the door. 

Peter looks up like he didn’t expect to see him there, and his eyes are red-rimmed like he’s been crying. He looks strange, shell-shocked, and Tony sees the abrasion Friday mentioned, and a cut on his side that sliced right through the suit. His hands are shaking, and he’s holding his arms close to himself, like he’s trying to be small.

Tony strides towards him, trying to hold eye contact. “What’s wrong, bud?” he asks, his heart beating in his ears. He reaches him, immediately gripping Peter’s elbow. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Peter stares at him for a second, and then he shakes his head, looking down at the ground. “Nothing,” he says, voice dry and wavering. “I’m—I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Tony doesn’t mean to, but he scoffs, stepping closer. “You’re fine? You don’t look fine. It doesn’t seem fine.”

Peter still doesn’t look at him, and he reaches up, covers his mouth with his hand.

Tony’s panic is making a quick upwards climb, and he swallows hard, narrowing his eyes. “Pete, c’mon,” he says. “Talk to me, what happened? You alright? What’s going on, you got knocked in the head here—” He reaches up, gently runs his thumb over the new bruise. It’s turning black and blue already, and Peter only flinches a little bit. 

“Nothing happened,” Peter says, quickly pulling his hand from his mouth and looking at Tony again. He’s got that resolve that Tony has come to know so well, the kind of stubbornness that’s truly his karmic justice after everything he’s put Pepper, Rhodey and Happy through. 

He knows, by that look on Peter’s face, that he’s not gonna get it out of him. Not straight up, anyway. Not by just asking.

“Med bay, yeah?” Tony asks, sliding his hand up Peter’s arm to grip his shoulder. “I can patch you up. You want me to get May—”

“No, no,” Peter says, fast, and his eyes look wild now. “No, it’s—it’s late, she’s sleeping.”

“Pete, she’s—you know she’d get up for you if you need her,” Tony says, trying not to sound so incredulous. What’s happening here is really freaking him out.

“It’s okay,” Peter says, reaching up and wiping at his eye, like he doesn’t want Tony to see. “Let’s go. I want the, uh—Hello Kitty bandaids.”

Tony laughs on instinct, but the quip isn’t full of Peter’s usual mirth and lightness. Peter makes like he’s gonna walk past him, but then it’s as if something stops him in his tracks, and he slows down. Leans into Tony’s space, staring straight ahead.

Tony takes the opportunity to drape an arm over his shoulders, and he swallows hard. “You will get the Hello Kitty bandaids,” Tony says, tugging him out of the room. “Chococat, My Melody—gang’s all there.”

Tony can feel the tension in Peter’s shoulders as they walk up the stairs, in the silence surrounding them, in the concerned look on Peter’s face, like he’s still stuck somewhere else, somewhere Tony can’t follow. It’s practically torture, not knowing what the hell is going on, what’s bothering him, but Tony knows this is gonna be slow going. This shit doesn’t happen to Peter often, but when it does—everything feels a little more colorless.

“Here,” Tony says, once they’re inside the med bay. He opens up the closet, and pulls out some of the pajamas he keeps in here for Peter. “Put these on and then we’ll get you fixed up.”

Peter takes them, nodding, and he’s still got that faraway look in his eye. He pads over to the bathroom, and gently closes the door.

Tony thinks about texting Helen, but he realizes that’s just a panic response, and Friday said this was only a few cuts and bruises, and she would have alerted him if Peter had a concussion. He knows she would have, logically, but again, he’s panicking, and getting suspicious of the AI he coded and created, as if she’d hide something like that from him.

She totally could, if Peter created one of those back doors he’s so fond of. And like, Ultron is a thing that happened. Friday could be going Ultron and starting her new evil reign with hiding secrets about Peter from him.

But she definitely isn’t.

But she totally could be.

Tony sighs, digging his fingers into his eyes and bracing his hand on the wall. 

His heart jumps when he hears Peter crying.

He looks up at the door. It’s still closed, and he recognizes that sound—how Peter cries when he’s desperately trying not to, when he’s trying to stifle it and hold it in and be stronger than that. Tony does it too, and he doesn’t know why the hell the two of them don’t realize that crying isn’t something that makes them weak—Pepper always reminds him of that. Tries to, anyway. But he’s right back to forgetting when he’s doing it in the moment, his cheeks heating up with anger and rage.

He hears Peter hiccup, and Tony slowly approaches the door. 

“Pete,” Tony tries.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Peter says, fast, before Tony can get another word out. “Gimme a second.”

Tony sighs, nodding to himself. He stands there anxiously, kind of like when the doctor kicked him out of the room when Morgan was being born, and he listens to Peter trying to stay quiet, trying to stop his tears. Tony sort of wants to lash out, wants to say _you know you can cry in front of me_ , but he stays quiet, too.

The door opens a couple minutes later, and Peter glances up at him as he walks out, holding his suit in a balled-up mess against his chest. His eyes are redder than they were before, and he hovers close like he did in the foyer, but still not saying anything. 

Tony hates feeling helpless. Especially when it comes to his kids.

He leads him over to the presumptive Spider-Man bed that Peter occupies whenever he winds up here, and Peter puts his suit aside on the bedside table. Tony decides to take care of the mess on his forehead first. 

He clears his throat, and moves over to the counter, taking everything he needs out of the cabinets. He grabs a washcloth, running it under some water at the closest sink. He walks back over to Peter. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly fell off the roof at MIT?” Tony asks, barely thinking about it before the phrase comes out of his mouth.

Peter’s eyes narrow a little bit as Tony cleans off the wound, getting rid of the dirt and blood still clinging to it. “No,” Peter says, slowly. 

Tony smiles. “Well, I was younger than everybody else, considering how quickly I got there, and I—I have no idea who dealt Rhodey his lot in life, but he decided to make sure I got through my college years without getting killed, despite my working against him at every opportunity.”

Peter is looking at him now, intently. 

Tony reaches over, and grabs the alcohol pads he’d taken out, and a big Hello Kitty bandage, featuring Badtz Maru. “You know, I did the college partying thing—even though I was way too young for the college partying thing—and I went a little overboard. Almost always.”

“That could be the title of your autobiography,” Peter says, a small smile on his face. 

Tony grins, a little relief surging through him. “Sorry for the oncoming sting, Spidey,” he says, watching as Peter winces when he gently rubs the alcohol pad over the cut. “But, uh, yeah, I was two and a half bottles into my roommate Carson’s whiskey sour concoction, and Rhodey never liked Carson _anyway_ , so I’m pretty sure he killed him—he moved out after this whole incident, but he wasn’t the one taking all of his shit away, if you know what I mean.”

Peter snorts, fighting a bigger smile.

Tony peels the bandaid open and gently covers the wound with it, Badtz Maru glaring at him. Peter cracks his jaw and pulls his shirt up to reveal the slice across his ribcage, and Tony winces a bit on his behalf. He doesn’t think it needs stitches, especially considering how fast Peter heals. 

He keeps on with his story. “Well, I went to the roof to cause some trouble because that’s what my brain wanted to do, and I know, unfortunately, that you know what it’s like to be drunk—”

Peter scoffs. “Barely. Like twice.”

“Five times, I have eyes everywhere,” Tony says, raising an eyebrow at him as he starts to clean up the other cut. “And anyway—you know drunk vision. Like you’re in some kind of tunnel or some shit. You’ve got absolutely no depth perception, you’re bumbling around like a moron—well, Rhodey grabbed me right off the edge and tossed me so far—Pete, I probably went like, fifteen feet. He tossed me back onto the roof like a fucking baseball.”

Peter covers his mouth, laughing, his middle shaking where Tony is trying to clean the cut. Tony chuckles, grabbing one of the alcohol pads. 

“And I had a knot on my forehead the _size_ of a damn baseball,” Tony says, swiping the wound down. “Yours is smaller than mine was, but it reminded me.” He opens a couple more bandaids and starts lining them up, My Melody, Chococat and Cinnamaroll all staring back at him. “He said he should have given me about six more for giving him a goddamn heart attack.” Tony shakes his head, smiling. 

“He loves you,” Peter says. 

“Yup,” Tony says, pressing the final bandaid and pushing Peter’s shirt back down. He sighs and sits down next to him, patting Peter’s knee. “Think we’re good.”

There’s a brief silence, and the atmosphere shifts slightly.

Peter looks down, his face scrunching up with oncoming tears. “I know I can talk to you,” he whispers, voice close to breaking. “I just—right now I sorta just wanna—just, uh, relax, and, um. Sit in the living with you or something, cause, uh—” A tear races down his cheek, and Tony’s throat goes tight. “Uh, what happened, I—I did what I could, but now I—now, right now, I wanna—just—sit with you. Just hang out with you, because I, uh—um, it’ll make me feel—safe—”

“Okay,” Tony says, fast, feeling awful for letting him struggle through that thought. A rush of warmth shoots through his heart, and the need to just—fix this. If hanging out with Tony makes Peter feel safe, after whatever the hell he’s dealt with—that’s a fucking privilege.

Tony tries not to cry, pats Peter’s knee again. “Okay, you got it, bud. Let’s go, c’mon.”

Peter nods, chewing on his lower lip, and Tony quickly ruffles his hair, squeezing his shoulder. They both hop down, and Tony quickly tries to plan what the rest of the night (or early morning) is gonna look like.

~

Turns out, he can go overboard. Who knew?

He tosses out as many of the better blankets as he can find, including the red one that he was gonna gift Peter when he moved out. He bakes cookies, which don’t come out as badly as he thought they might, and he makes Peter hot chocolate with an abundance of marshmallows. He makes sure the room is set to the right light and temperature so Peter’s senses don’t go haywire, and the kid bundles up next to him when Tony starts the Peter playlist, which consists of the Star Wars movies, the Star Wars shows, the Indiana Jones series and a smattering of Brooklyn 99.

Peter eats six cookies, downs his hot chocolate, and after about forty five minutes of A New Hope, he falls asleep on Tony’s shoulder.

Tony cranes his neck trying to look at him, but he can only see the top of his head, hands clutching the red blanket in his lap. Tony nods to himself, glad he was able to take care of the situation without worrying May or knowing one single thing about what happened, and he hopes the kid is able to move past whatever it is when he wakes up to a new day.

But. Unfortunately. Tony still wants to know what upset him this much. 

He worries, and his mind wanders. He knows the kid is probably secretly trying to deal with everything he’s been through, knows he doesn’t want to be a burden when it comes to something half of the universe dealt with too. Tony knows Peter is selfless, puts everybody’s wellbeing ahead of his own, and if he’s having trouble dealing with his ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’, he’s keeping it to himself and suffering for it.

It could be that.

It could also be some new asshole villain fucking with Spider-Man. Those kinds of people, they don’t let up, they don’t take the end of the world as an excuse to find kindness or sympathy. And Tony knows how villains can be. How they can be personal, whether they know your identity or not.

If it’s anything like that, Tony wants to take care of it. Arrest whoever the fuck it is, get rid of them. Peter doesn’t need to be dealing with that kind of shit right now. Or ever, but that’s a different story.

Tony glances down at him again, and Peter lets out a small snore, which usually means he’s down the lane of dead sleep that not much can knock him out of. Tony clicks his tongue, maneuvers his phone in his left hand, and awkwardly types out a command to Friday.

_SLEEP MODE - has Karen uploaded Spider-Man’s video feed to the server yet for the previous six hours?_

He waits on the response while she searches, and maybe feels a little bit like he’s in invading Peter’s privacy. His face heats up, and he’s just about to cancel the command when Friday responds.

_It has not streamed in, but here is the CCTV account of Spider-Man’s situation tonight which lines up with his initial spiked heart rate._

The video comes up and starts playing, silently, before Tony can click out of it.

It looks like a bodega. Tony sees Spider-Man struggling with three armed men, rushing through the aisles and webbing one of them to the ground. He fights hand to hand with another one, who throws shit from the shelves at him—Peter webs the gun away from him, but then the guy pulls out a knife. Tony watches Peter get both injuries, the slice with the knife, and the wound on his forehead when this asshole actually head-butts his kid.

Right as Peter finally gets the upper hand on the second guy, a gun goes off. Peter’s head whips around, and Tony can’t see what the fuck happened, even when Friday gives him another angle outside of the bodega.

The third man runs, the one who fired the shot, and Spider-Man throws web bombs, instantly latching the asshole to the closest streetlight. 

But the damage is already done. There’s a man, a civilian—blood blooms where the bullet caught him, right in the gut, and he collapses on the sidewalk while two other people try to staunch the bleeding. Tony sees Peter rushing over, trembling, trying to prop him up, trying to talk to him. There’s no sound on the video because of the sleep mode, but Tony doesn’t know if he could deal with hearing it, anyway.

It looks a lot like something he knows happened, years ago now. Like the shade of it, a memory seeping through time and replaying itself. Peter only told him the details once, but Tony hasn’t forgotten. 

The image it painted in his head. It looks a lot like this.

A shudder runs through him as he sees Peter struggle, clearly panicked, and Tony types a command in.

_Turn it off, please._

The video stops and drops away. Friday sends a response.

_This event occurred three blocks from where Ben Parker was killed, boss._

Tony wonders when the hell he shared that information or if she’s reading his fucking brainwaves, but he doesn’t reply back. It just makes him feel worse. He knows Peter must have known, must have noticed. He clicks his phone closed, leaves it on the arm rest, and draws in a deep breath.

If he had to guess what had upset Peter tonight, he wouldn’t have landed on this. But these things, the reminders, the similarities—they always manage to find you. Even when there’s already too much other shit going on.

Tony gently, very gently, moves the arm that Peter’s leaning on, and wraps it around the kid’s shoulders. Peter readjusts without waking up, thankfully, and Tony hugs him a little tighter, resting his cheek on the top of Peter’s head. 

There are some things he can’t fix. Some hurts he can’t take away. But he’ll be there, no matter what. He’ll make sure Peter feels safe. Tony came so close to dying, just like so many important figures in Peter’s life—and he won’t let that happen again. He won’t become a memory that finds Peter on a street corner. Something else to haunt him. 

Tony closes his eyes, gripping Peter’s shoulder. “I’ve got you, kid,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”


End file.
